


i am another me at the moment

by imgoingtocrash



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant Except For The Dream World, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Lotus Eater Machine, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), everything is perfect...too perfect, peter dreams a world where he gets BOTH of his father figures, wanna live in endgame denial? so does peter!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 00:29:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19240177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtocrash/pseuds/imgoingtocrash
Summary: He recognizes that he’s coming out ofsomething, now. He doesn’t know what, but he knows the memories come so fast, so clustered, that it’s not exactly right. Still, he holds on to them. He believes them. Tony and Ben are both here, both so important to him, what else could matter?Peter is hit with a spell that preys upon the mind and manipulates reality for the better by keeping its victims in a dream so good they never want to leave. Despite hints of his reality breaking through, Peter must firstchooseto leave the dream world to break the spell.





	i am another me at the moment

**Author's Note:**

> This trope wasn’t the entire reason I decided to to Bad Things Happen Bingo [(Check out my card here)](https://imgoingtocrash.tumblr.com/post/185634667339/i-am-another-me-at-the-moment-by-imgoingtocrash), but BOY was I excited to get to this. I love this trope. It’s a classic science fiction thing, and any show that does an episode with it usually gets major kudos from me.
> 
> If you’re not familiar with the Lotus Eater Machine Trope, [here’s its TVTropes page.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LotusEaterMachine) TLDR: Peter’s in a very happy, perfect, completely unreal world because of Bad Guy Magic, and the only way out is to break the spell and face reality instead.
> 
> The medical stuff herein is slightly handwave-y. Partially because it’s a mix of magic and science and partially because I just wanted to do the trope and I didn’t want to go down a medical rabbit hole to do it.
> 
> If anyone still cares: ENDGAME SPOILERS. If you still haven’t seen Endgame, turn around and come back later, before it leaves theaters.
> 
> Title from How To Preserve The Life Of Death by Ruston Kelly. I’ve been listening to him a lot lately, and this line seemed appropriate.

“Peter,” a voice says, just at the edges of Peter’s consciousness. His eyes feel incredibly heavy, his limbs like vibranium. His last patrol must have worn him out, though he can’t seem to remember exactly what it involved. He was—it was like normal, wasn’t it? So common that there’s nothing significant to note. That’s the only thing that makes sense.

“Pete, kiddo, time to get up. I’m serious, we’re gonna be late.” The voice seems almost too familiar. Its existence wrong to a point that makes Peter drag his lids open, coming face to face with the voice’s owner.

It’s Uncle Ben, standing there just like Peter last remembers him. He’s leaning against the top bunk of Peter’s bed easily—Ben always said Peter would grow up tall and lanky too one day, just like Ben and his dad. His hair is a darker brown, supposedly inherited from Peter’s grandmother, but there are grey hairs dusting in-between, more than Peter last remembers.

He’s standing there casually, like he didn’t—like he’s not—this is _wrong_ , Ben _can’t be here_ —

 

 

_Peter and Ben are standing under a streetlight, only blocks away from Delmar’s. This is the route they always take home—used to take home, before—before_ what? 

_Peter moves two seconds faster. Ben hits the ground when the gunshot rings out, but there’s no blood. Instead, Peter’s grazed by the bullet on his arm, but both Parkers are otherwise unharmed._

_The gunman, face masked, clearly distressed and having not thought of the possibility of missing, runs like hell, flinging crowded bystanders to the side to make a path around the block. Peter makes to chase and Ben grabs hold of Peter’s ankle, stopping him._

_“Peter,” he says, bewildered. “How did you…?”_

 

_The scene changes._

 

_Peter’s in the bathroom, putting Neosporin on a cut that’s not exactly a cut—it’s the bullet graze that he pretended wasn’t there, already healing._

_“I hope you’re decent. You gave me one hell of a scrape when you pushed me out of the way,” Ben says, giving Peter no time to lock the bathroom door before his uncle opens it. Peter is shirtless, one hand on the tube of healing cream and the other buried in a box of bandages. Crap._

_“Was that—“ Ben grabs Peter’s arm, searching for an opening that’s no longer there. It looks like a cat scratch, or healed stitches. “This was—that’s not possible. Peter…what the hell is going on?”_

 

 

Peter shakes his head, tries to shake off the last dregs of sleep. His eyes are watery, and he shakes that off too. He must have had a bad dream. Ben didn’t die that night, Peter saved him. He knew about Spider-Man before anyone else, and that had meant so much to Peter when he’d felt like he was about to burst from not being able to tell anyone what happened to him at Oscorp. He’s not sure what he was thinking, that there had been a time where Ben wasn’t in his life.

“Peter?” Ben refocuses Peter back to the matter at hand. They’re running late. Peter needs to get out of bed. Also, there’s no need to worry Ben about whatever it is he was thinking of. He and May get stressed enough about Peter being Spider-Man as it is.

“Yeah, Ben, I’m up, I’m up.”

“That’s what I like to hear. C’mon, work for me, school for you. Fifteen minutes. Make it less and we’ll sneak out before your aunt offers us breakfast.”

A muffled “I heard that, mister!” comes from the direction of May and Ben’s room. Ben and Peter share a familiar look at pulling Aunt May’s leg, particularly about her lack of cooking skills. It warms Peter’s chest. He tries to remember why it would any more than normal, but lets it go. Why wouldn’t he, when it’s so normal, so easy?

With a few pats to Peter’s leg, Ben is out the door, leaving Peter to his morning routine.

 

xx

 

“So it’s a magic-induced coma?”

Bruce Banner makes a so-so gesture with one of his hands, the mix of human and green monster only slightly off-putting to May. She’s been getting to know the Avengers better since Peter’s return to the land of the living, but what Doctor Banner has turned himself into is still a bit of a mystery to May Parker. He’s smart, though, and extremely kind, so she tells herself to move on and get over it.

After all, other than the mysterious Doctor Strange, Bruce might be the only other person able to figure out what’s wrong with her nephew at the moment. 

Because Tony’s—gone, now. And May has promised herself to love Peter a little more than she already does, just for Tony, for bringing her baby home at such a horrendous cost to himself. It’s just one more person that cared for Peter and watched over him that’s no longer there, and once again, May’s filling holes in her nephew’s life she was never meant to.

“Something like that. Magic’s not exactly my forte, but his brain scans seem to indicate more activity than your normal coma patient.”

“Which means…?”

“He’s awake, in there. Or at least, he thinks he is.”

 

xx

 

The normalcy of school almost makes the specific events of it feel like a blur. He recognizes the familiar faces and events—his academic decathlon team members, the practice that occurred, Ned and MJ at lunch—but as he’s walking to the pick-up and drop-off area of Midtown at the end of the day, he can’t think of a thing to tell Ben about it. What tests did he take, again? Did he do well on the history questions during practice? He must have, because he doesn’t remember any feelings of anxiety or dread concerning them. If something is amiss, he can’t pinpoint it, and his enhanced senses stay quiet on the matter.

He figures that he must be in a mood today. Ben comes to pick him up, in fact, and for some reason Peter expects someone else. Peter sees Ben’s worn-in Taurus, assigned to him when he became an NYPD detective, and wonders where Happy is. But in his mind, as if lightning strikes, he knows Happy is at the Avengers compound, or Stark Tower, or any number of places, doing his job as always. He doesn’t pick Peter up from school. He never has.

“Are you excited about this weekend?” Ben asks, turning out of the school’s parking lot and onto the streets of the city. Instead of driving towards their apartment, he signals towards the interstate. At Peter’s non-response, Ben rolls his eyes. “Going to Tony’s. You made such a big deal about it before, I figured you guys must be working on something important.”

_Tony,_ Peter thinks, mouth frozen in its half-open position. _Tony’s not here anymore, I know that, he’s gone, I watched him die. I wore a suit to his funeral, just like I did at Ben’s. I sat in Morgan’s tent and bawled my eyes out all by myself until Pepper found me. I said goodbye and his eyes were so empty, how could Tony Stark be anything but full of light? The Law of Conservation says that energy can’t be destroyed, how did that_ happen _?_

He can feel himself shaking, feels as if time’s stopped around him. _For months, all I’ve wanted is for him to come back, but he can’t. I take Morgan to the park and we don’t talk about how it should be Tony instead. I keep grieving and all I want is to be over it already, it’s not fair, how could I ever_ forget—

 

 

_Peter is sitting in Tony’s lab. It’s not at the compound, but instead the one in Tony’s garage, in his home upstate. Tony is soldering two wires together, his head bobbing to the music FRIDAY is playing from the speakers. Peter looks up to the screen in front of him. There are lines and lines of code, but he’s unsure exactly what he’s working on in that moment._

_“Tony,” he says, and it doesn’t feel weird on his tongue at all—he’s been calling Tony by his first name for years, why would it? “This part isn’t working right. I keep getting error codes.”_

_“Let me have a look. I bet Karen will be mad if I let you break her.”_

 

_The scene changes._

 

_They’re still in the garage, but this time they’re watching Tony’s nanotechnology as it ripples back and forth over Peter’s skin, almost like water._

_“So cool,” Peter says, tapping his arm and watching it move._

_“I was thinking it might be useful—this way you wouldn’t have to wear your suit under your clothes, and I—“_

_The door to the garage opens, and Pepper walks in, two-year-old Morgan on her hip. Pepper effortlessly descends the few stairs towards them. The nanobots slide up into their container at Tony’s command, out of the way when Pepper places their daughter into Tony’s arms._

_“Do you mind watching her for a bit?” Pepper asks. “The Tokyo branch is having some kind of meltdown, and I need to be on a conference call in an hour.”_

_“Do I_ mind _,” Tony huffs at the insinuation. “How about it, Miss Morgan? You wanna hang with Dad and Peter for the afternoon?” He tickles Morgan, causing her to erupt in childish laughter. “I think that’s a yes, huh, Pete?”_

 

_The scene changes again._

 

_“It’s hard to imagine,” Peter admits, slowly sinking to the couch. They’re at the compound, now. Tony sits down next to him, slinging an arm around his mentee._

_“I think it will be a good thing, though.”_

_“Are you sure you can handle it?” Peter asks. “Retirement?”_

_“I might not have been able to, before,” Tony admits, shrugging his shoulders. “You know how I was. Now though, with the baby coming…it’s as a good a time as ever. Plus, I’ll still be involved with everyone. Enhancing tech, keeping an eye on a certain spider…” Tony smiles, giving Peter a half-hearted hair ruffle._

_Peter laughs, but looks to Tony sincerely. “I’ll be okay without you. You know that, right?”_

_“Of course. Doesn’t mean I won’t be here in case you need me. Superhero stuff or just, you know. As Tony.”_

_“I know,” Peter replies, leaning into Tony’s grip and settling himself against Tony’s shoulder._

 

 

The urge to cry recedes. He wipes at the tears that have already fallen, unsure why they came on at all. Tony retired years ago, only shortly after Peter really started to gain his confidence as a hero. He and Pepper manage Stark Industries and take care of Morgan. Peter visits their lake house often. He saw Mister Stark when he came over for dinner last week.

Uncle Ben doesn’t note the sudden rush of emotion Peter feels he’s just been racing through. Instead, he picks up the conversation as if Peter answered. Maybe he did.

“Nano-tech, huh? That’s exciting.”

“Yeah,” Peter replies. “I think it’ll have a lot of applications, even outside of the Avengers. Imagine those little robots helping Aunt May fix people at the hospital, or building things in factories, or—“

Ben laughs, and Peter drinks in the warmth of the sound. “Okay, okay, don’t overwhelm those of us who are still trying to figure out how to use our new Starkphones. Take it slowly. How do they work?”

 

xx

 

The magic-user that did this to Peter—well, May’s unsure if she would be effective against some crazy supervillain type, but she thinks hunting down the bastard would be more useful than keeping up her current vigil at Peter’s bedside.

It’s only been a few days, but sleeping in the hospital chairs hasn’t been effective to Peter’s condition or any use in getting May a good night’s sleep. But, well, it’s Peter. Her wonderful nephew, who she’s already lost once. As harmless as this coma seems to Peter physically, May’s terrified of losing him again. To balm her nerves, she sits here, does the New York Times crossword in pencil, and waits.

Sometimes, she and Bruce talk to Peter, but no one is sure what he can or can’t hear in his mind. May’s unsure what exactly Peter is doing in there, but she hopes he’s okay. She doesn’t know what to do if he’s not.

Doctor Strange is supposed to come to the slowly-rebuilding Avengers Compound in a few days time, and so far that’s the only hope she has for better answers.

xx

 

Peter walks up to the Stark household, desperately trying to ignore the pit in his stomach that appeared upon seeing the lake. While they wait for Tony to answer the door, Peter watches the sun’s reflection on the water. For a moment, a clump of grass and flowers passes by. Peter turns to where FRIDAY has opened the door for them, and forgets why he was seeing a piece of circular metal in its place.

“Boss is in the garage,” FRIDAY says, inviting them to find their own way to Tony.

“Thanks, FRIDAY,” Ben says. Peter grins, because he always does when Ben is polite to Tony’s technology. He’s not sure the robots and AI actually care, but Peter thinks he knows where he got the manners of being nice to technically inanimate objects from.

They walk through the living room, passing hordes of framed pictures. Peter recognizes more than he thinks he should, and isn’t that strange? He’s in so many, at so many ages—that’s wrong, but it can’t be. More missing pieces, but once again, nothing feels a hair out of place. All is at peace in and around him, because it can’t be anything else.

When they reach the garage, Tony rolls himself out from under a car. Since the destruction of his mansion, he’s been rebuilding his collection of classics, and this particular hot rod is no exception.

“Ben, Peter!” Tony yells, adjusting his own volume when FRIDAY automatically lowers the volume of his work playlist.

“You’re going to need hearing aids soon, Stark,” Ben jokes, his arms around Tony in a friendly embrace. Peter watches the interaction, breathing in what feels like disbelief.

Uncle Ben and Tony, both so important to him, interacting, how did this even happen? He’s surely seen this before, so it shouldn’t be shocking, but—

Once again, his brain supplies the answers, but this time it’s so many more, so much that he’s almost overwhelmed.

 

 

_Peter is six years old, and he is at his very first funeral. His parents are not even in the caskets up front since the plane crash left them without bodies to recover, but he won't know this until many years later._

_Peter keeps asking for his parents, but he doesn’t remember them that well, and the vision in front of him is almost contradictory because of that. Except Uncle Ben and Aunt May bracket his sides, holding his hands as people give condolences that Peter does not want, so he knows it must be real. He wants his parents, to go to his old house, to not move to Ben and May’s New York Apartment._

_He tells a man he does not recognize at the funeral this. He asked to go to the bathroom and instead went out to the hallway and started crying, which caused the strange man to ask after him._

_“I’m sorry you’re going through this, kid, seriously,” the man says, and it doesn’t help much, because everyone here is sorry. Then, the man says something else, and it’s the first time someone’s offered to do anything about it. That makes all the difference. “Your parents’ work was special to a lot of people, including Stark Industries. Least I can do is show you around the SI labs, give you a good time, right? You like science? Tech?”_

_(This is not the most appropriate thing to offer a grieving child, but in this moment, with all of his childless inexperience, it’s the best Tony Stark has. Pepper accompanied him to this funeral, and while he's mostly attending to keep good publicity after the whole Iron Man thing has him once again in the height of the public eye, he also hates to have lost brilliant minds like the Parkers, so his sentiment is genuine.)_

 

_The scene changes._

 

_Tony ends up showing Peter Parker his private lab, not in the company, but in his mansion._

_In classic Tony fashion, rather than just let Peter play with DUM-E, Tony decides to give the kid a first-hand demo of the Iron Man gauntlets._

_At the sound of an explosion, May Parker and Pepper Potts both come running down the stairs, exasperated sighs on their lips at the delighted expressions on Tony and Peter’s faces at the explosive carnage they’ve caused to the south wall of the lab._

_When Peter suggests an idea for a built-in fire repression system to give Tony’s bots a break, May and Ben become doomed to regular visits with the famous Tony Stark._

 

_The scene changes again._

 

_A still small Peter is on Tony’s lap, using Tony’s knee instead of a chair so that his small hands can be guided by Tony’s larger ones over the workbench._

_“Watch your fingers,” Tony warns, smiling when the light on the circuit board changes from red to green with a short spark of electricity. “Good job, Pete. Now we just take the pliers and—“_

 

_The flashes become faster, shorter:_

_Tony Stark avoids death quite a few times—Peter never reacts well. But Tony Stark doesn’t die. He never has before, after all, why would he ever?_

_Ben and Tony bond over classic cars. Uncle Ben talks about his grandfather’s collection, sold off to support his mother when his dad passed. Sometimes, they watch football with Rhodey, and Peter has never been more interested in sports than when he’s sitting between them both on a Sunday._

_“I love you, kiddo,” Tony says, kissing the top of Peter’s head, comforting, that replacement of parental that May and Ben have become too._

_Peter runs into Tony’s lab in Stark Tower practically vibrating. “Tony, I got into Midtown, holy crap, I got in!”_

_Tony finds out about Spider-Man before he finds out that Peter_ is  _Spider-Man. “You told Ben first?! I’m a superhero, kid! This is basically my job!” He goes on like this for only five more minutes before he gives in to his latent curiosity to see what exactly Peter can do. He doesn’t ask Peter to go to Germany, because just like Thanos, Germany never happens. Peter doesn’t know to miss either, once his mind stops trying to supply this difference._

_Tony and Pepper finally pick a date and get married. Peter stands next to Rhodey and Happy as a groomsman, and only cries a little during his toast._

_Peter doesn’t miss Morgan’s birth—he barely misses a few days of her life, let alone five years. He holds her the day she’s born, babysits every time he visits. Morgan and Peter never know a time when they weren’t practically family._

 

 

He recognizes that he’s coming out of _something_ , now. He doesn’t know what, but he knows the memories come so fast, so clustered, that it’s not exactly right. Still, he holds on to them. He believes them. Tony and Ben are both here, both so important to him, what else could matter?

He takes his turn to be folded into Tony’s arms, his hug less playful and jovial than Ben’s. “I’ve missed you so much, Tony,” he says. It hurts, almost, to say, but it’s so fully meant. It can’t have been only a week since they last touched, and yet.

“I know,” Tony assures, a soothing hand rubbing up and down Peter’s back. Tony knew him as a small child, they’ve had so many years together, that’s right, isn’t it? It shouldn’t feel so new to be loved by him so openly. Peter basks in it, doesn’t let go even though it should be mushy and embarrassing for them both by now. 

Tony pulls away instead, cupping Peter’s shoulders in his hands, his look suddenly serious. _“You can’t stay here forever.”_

Tony says it, but for a moment, it’s not Tony. It’s not his Tony, not _this_ Tony who’s practically adopted him with May and Ben, whose comforting presence will always be there. It’s a voice almost disjointed, out of place in this moment of bliss that Peter was having.

“What?” Peter asks, shaken. His statement doesn’t fit. Something’s not right again, when he’d had it all sorted moments before.

The smile morphs back onto Tony’s face, unnatural in how quick the transition is. “We only have the weekend, remember? Let’s make it count. These little bots don’t program themselves.” Tony makes a shooing motion at Ben. “Out, technologically primitive, you insult our genius with your presence.”

Ben rolls his eyes, giving Tony a playful shove. “See you later. Bye, Pete.”

Peter bites his lip, only just resisting the pull in his chest that wants Ben to stay in fear that for some reason he might not come back.

 

xx

 

Doctor Strange talks to Peter. He gets through, or at least he says he does. There’s no change in Peter’s vitals, no movement from her nephew. 

He touches Peter with glowing hands, face scrunched in concentration. “Come on, Parker,” he says, pushing against Peter with a little more force. “You can’t stay here forever.”

It seems like only seconds and very little effort, but Strange disconnects from Peter and breathes in and out like he’s been running a marathon. “Well, that’s a start.” He looks to May. “The kid is in there, that’s for sure. The problem is that he’s playing into the spell when he needs to be fighting it.”

“And if he doesn’t?” May demands, hand covering Peter’s on the sheets and squeezing tight.

“If I can’t force him out, and he doesn’t try to leave…I’m not sure that he can.”

 

xx

 

Peter is clingy after Ben leaves, but Tony doesn’t comment on it.

Maybe it’s because their affection is already so casual. When the Stark Expo went up in flames, Peter had been eight. Old enough to understand that Tony was more than some cool superhero, flying around and protecting people. There were real, serious threats in the world, and Peter realized Tony might one day get hurt fighting them. (Peter remembers their phone calls up to the Expo, now, Tony blowing off his usual visits to New York for months because he’d actually been dying and he didn’t want Peter to know.)

When everything was said and done, well, Peter had been so scared. Tony had barely healed from everything, but he’d been more open. Tony hugged Peter in front of Ben and May and Pepper and comforted him when the childish tears fell. He wasn’t just some friendly kid, anymore, but someone Tony treasured in his life like Pepper or Rhodey. It didn’t change much, but Peter remembers feeling like he really started to know Tony, after that, not just the infamous billionaire and superhero persona he often put on for others.

So he follows Tony a little listlessly around the house instead of finding something of his own to do, opting to join Tony and Morgan for the fifth showing of Mulan that he’s been subjected to since Morgan was born.

_You can’t stay here forever_ echoes in his mind and he resettles again, his shoulder touching Tony’s on the living room couch where they’ve migrated after making dinner for Morgan. Morgan wriggles on his lap, her legs on Peter and head on a pillow over Tony’s thigh. Tony is here. This has to be real. This is what is supposed to be. It’s _right_.

In the middle of the fight scene in the snow, Peter answers his phone to a call from May. Instead of moving due to the child in his lap, he simply whispers a “Hello?” in response.

“ _Peter. Baby, I don’t—_ “ May says, but it sounds like she’s been crying. His spider-sense doesn’t react, but his brain is screaming: wrong, wrong, wrong. May doesn’t have any reason to be crying, or any reason to be calling, does she? “ _I need you to wake up, okay? I need you to come home. I know it’s hard, but I need you to—_ ”

She’s cut off without a hint of static from their phone connection. “May? May, are you there?”

“Your reception is really crappy out there, huh?” she replies. The panic in her voice is gone along with the note of tears barely held in. Instead it sounds like she’s whisking something, the phone at its place on her shoulder. “I can’t believe Tony can’t fix something like that. Anyway, what I said was, when you come home, there will be some leftover quiche for you in the fridge. No rush, though. I’m sure you’re having fun at Tony’s as always.”

“Don’t ever come back,” comes a low voice in the background. “Save yourself!” is followed by a soft _thwap_.

“Don’t listen to Ben, honey.”

“I—“ Peter swallows, unsure how to respond. His heart feels like it’s beating too fast. Something is wrong, why doesn’t something _feel_ wrong? “Aunt May, is everything okay?”

“Same as always, just Ben acting like an old fool.”

“Old?!” Ben’s voice shouts from the background. “How dare you!”

“Ben, don’t you—“ May’s laughter leaks through the line. “Sorry—ha, Pete—love you— _Ben_!“

“Bye, Peter!” Ben calls, ending their conversation with the laughter of his Aunt and Uncle. They didn’t answer him, not really, but—that’s not wrong. They were laughing and happy and...he must have misheard.

It feels like he’s questioning his sanity by questioning things, because nothing is bad. Nothing is wrong. There’s no villain to fight, no problem to solve.

_Stop resisting_ , says a voice in his head, unlike the echo-chamber equivalents he’s been hearing until now, because it’s his own voice. And he should, right? Who would wonder if their life was anything but real?

 

xx

 

Pepper coming by is unexpected, but it happens a couple of times while Peter is in the Avengers’ medical wing. Maybe it shouldn’t be weird to her—Pepper was Tony’s wife, after all. Even before they got married, Pepper and Peter must have spent some amount of time together. Not to mention that the Avengers are all one big family of sorts: makeshift and unsteady, but bonded together by a generally similar cause of protecting people who can’t protect themselves, whether that be just on Earth, or out in the vast universe around them.

Hell, in this mess, she supposes Pepper herself was one of the first of the likes of May—not one of the heroes, but one of the people standing behind them, supporting them, keeping the home fires burning. (Then again, when Peter was brought home, tear-stained and bloody and so _alive_ —Pepper had been wearing a suit of her own. Maybe people like them were always heroes after all, just manifesting in their own different ways when the time required it of them.)

Pepper doesn’t bring Morgan on her visits. As much as Morgan and Peter have been bonding, May agrees that the last thing that poor little girl needs is to worry about someone else close to her being hurt and going away. Instead, sometimes Pepper just holds Peter’s hand, tugs a careful palm over Peter’s curls, and tells him all about what he’s been missing while stuck in his own head.

Pepper also happens to be there the next time Doctor Strange returns for a check-up on the so far unchanging situation.

“Doctor Banner found that there were long periods of increased brain activity when I got through to him,” Strange turns to May. “When you spoke to him later that day, the same activity occurred.”

“So the key to breaking this spell is what? Exactly what we’ve been doing?” May is tired of talking to the room without Peter really there to respond. It hurts, waiting for his laugh only to hear his heart monitor break the silence.

Strange shakes his head. “Perhaps I didn’t explain the spell itself well enough before. With something like this, he’s not simply asleep as normal. It’s not a coma. It’s a manipulation of his REM sleep, of his dreams. It preys upon his mind and creates a possible version of reality—the ideal version, to Peter. Something he would never _want_ to leave, because he isn’t able to notice as it shifts to accommodate its own inconsistencies with what he knows to be true.”

“But what you did—you broke through?” Pepper asks.

“Yes, but not for long. Not strongly enough to convince Peter to get out of there by himself.”

“Can’t I just pinch him?” May asks, only half-joking.

“Think a little more metaphysically, Miss Parker,” Strange says, pointing to his temples.

 

xx

 

The phone call effected him—it’s the end of the movie and Peter hadn’t realized the credits were almost over. Tony smiles down at the form of Morgan sprawled over them, brushing her dark hair between his fingers. Between the two of them, they leverage Morgan into a position to be carried up the stairs to bed.

While Tony’s gone, Pepper walks through the door, phone cradled against her shoulder. “Hey, Peter,” she whispers, before going back to her conversation. She removes her heels while discussing something about the quarterly budget, and bids her assistant goodnight before she plops down next to him on the couch.

“Hard day?” Peter asks.

Pepper shrugs. “Busy, but that’s the job.” She leans in conspiratorially. “Besides, I’m not sure what I’d do with myself if I even partially retired.”

“You just missed bedtime,” Tony interjects, sock-covered feet quiet on the stairs down towards them. He shakes his head, as if sorely disappointed, but his tone is the entirely Tony brand of joking. “You owe her exactly two stories and a cookie, no exceptions. She’s a tough negotiator, just like her mother.”

“I see.” Pepper puts out her hand, allowing Tony to drag her up to him, where they meet in an embrace.“I suppose if _Morgan’s_ decided, then…”

Tony smiles, but then the expression changes, almost flattening. His brow scrunches, backing away from Pepper and looking around the room before his gaze lands on Peter with a sudden clarity.

“ _Miss Potts,_ ” Tony’s voice projects, but it’s not the usual tone. Mister Stark always says that to Pepper like it’s a private joke, like it’s more special than a simple reference to their shared history as CEO and PA. Peter always used to like hearing it from them, secretly. It was good to see them happy, loving, teasing. It was a worn in banter, the start to another argument that was always filled with more laughter than anything else. “ _I think you might want to take this one._ ”

Peter doesn’t know what he means at first, but Pepper startles just like Tony did moments before, catching her balance on the side of the couch like she’s only just realized it’s there. Like she’s only just become present.

“ _Oh,_ ” she says, looking around the room, her gaze settling on Tony before it moves to Peter. Her voice that same tone as Tony’s was—is. Her own, but like it’s down an echo chamber, gravelly like static. “ _Oh, Peter,_ ” she continues, sitting on the couch. She cups his cheek, warm and maternal, her smile sad. “ _No wonder you want to stay._ ”

“Pepper, I don’t under—“ Peter’s head physically hums, like an icepick migraine that keeps digging in further. He winces, curling away from Pepper’s hands and more into himself.

Pepper turns to Tony. “ _What’s happening?_ ”

“ _Having us both here is putting a strain on the spell and his mind. It’s effective, but we’ll have to be quick._ ”

“ _Peter, honey,_ ” Pepper says, pulling Peter close again, forcing his gaze back to her. “ _This isn’t real. You know that I wish—I want Tony back too, but your aunt and I are right here, and we need you to wake up. This isn’t real, it’s just a dream._ ”

Peter shakes his head, the pain and her words making him feel frantic, on edge. “No, that’s not true, it can’t—you’re wrong!” He covers his ears with his hands, the static-like whine of their voices grating to his senses.

He remembers everything. Every moment with Tony, his whole life. He got to have _Ben_ his whole life. He lost his parents, but he didn’t lose anyone else. This world isn’t that cruel. No world should be.

Pepper sucks in a quick breath, holding the hands over his ears in her own shaking ones until they lower. “ _When Tony started this, do you know what I said? I said that I wouldn’t stand by and watch him die. I’d known him for so long, and I thought it was just one more way Tony Stark planned on trying to run himself into the ground. I’d been there through the drugs, the sexcapades, the alcohol, and I was finally drawing the line at him being Iron Man._ ”

He didn’t, in fact, know much about how Tony started. He’d followed Tony’s exploits as an inventor and as a public figure, but Tony rarely shared many stories of the old days, supposedly to protect the image Peter held of him that wasn’t particularly tainted by his earlier actions in life.

 

 

The memories try to take hold, but this time they blur too much for Peter to really soak them in.

_Pepper holds his hand the entire time while they wait to find Aunt May and Uncle Ben after Stark Expo explodes and he got separated from them_ —no, he was there with Uncle Ben the entire time.

_Pepper helps him study for the PSAT to help him get up his scores to get into Midtown_ —except that he remembers all of the long nights at the public library using a study guide made three years before, out of date, but all they could afford.

_Morgan is born, and Pepper runs a hand through Peter’s hair. “I’m glad you’ll be here for her,” Pepper says_ —but Morgan met him at the funeral, running out to her tent to find Pepper and instead finding her mother comforting the strange sixteen-year-old boy she only knew through the photographs in their home.

 

 

The lake house seems to blur around the edges, his vision of Pepper clearer, Tony less so, almost like it’s not Tony at all.

“ _He came out of that cave determined to do the right thing, to be the good man I always thought he was at any cost. He wasn’t running towards death, he was trying to make everyone’s lives worth living,_ ” Pepper continues, almost grounding him when the world around him that he’d believed in, trusted for however long, floats out of focus. 

“ _I have trusted and believed in Tony longer than anyone, Peter. Even if I don’t think it should have been him to make the sacrifice—even if I want to go back and change things—I can’t. I wake up, and I take care of my daughter, and I go into my office at Stark Industries, and I move forward knowing that he died to save everyone because he thought it was the right thing to do, and I trust that, even if I don’t want to live with the consequences of it._ ”

“But…Uncle Ben—“

“ _You got through losing Ben, too, Peter. When I met you, you were still this wonderful, bright kid, despite everything in the world that could have pulled you down. Tony always said—you reminded him so much of himself, sometimes. But what he loved most about you, I think, was that you didn’t dwell like him. He got so focused on saving the world that he didn’t let himself be a part of it._ ” 

He’d been getting better at it, as far as Peter could tell, but he’d noticed this about Tony too. Tony was trying to be more present by working with Peter, by helping to train the future of the Avengers rather than working himself to death to compensate with his uncertainty about the world’s safety to come. 

“ _Then we lost you and everyone else. All he did for months was help with finding the Infinity Stones. It’s only when we had Morgan that he realized he didn’t want to miss her entire life while trying to get you back. He got less time than he deserved, but he made every second with his family count. He worked to bring you home because he loved you as much as he loved us. Just like the family you still have loves you. You’re allowed to grieve, Peter. That doesn’t mean you can’t move on, too. You can’t do that if you stay here, because it’s not_ real _._ ”

At that, Pepper seems to snap out of existence. She doesn’t dissolve into ash in front of him, simply disappears from his vision along with the lake house that was once around him. Instead he becomes almost blinded by the surrounding white, the nothingness that replaces a world that he’d wanted and loved so much he’d apparently created it all on his own with the help of a little magic.

“ _Come on, baby,_ ” Aunt May’s voice echoes around them too. “ _It’s okay, you’re almost there, just wake up._ ”

“ _He’s gonna code, Strange—_ “ That’s Doctor Banner’s voice.

“ _You’ve got this, Parker, just a little bit longer—_ “ Doctor Strange pleads, more emotional than Peter’s ever really heard him.

“ _We need you to wake up, Peter. Please._ ” Pepper says, so far away.

His skull feels like it’s rattling, sending him into pieces.

 

xx

 

Peter’s vitals are off the charts. His heart is way too high over one hundred BPM for May’s liking, and the EEG machine’s lines are similar to those that happen when a patient is having a seizure.

“I still say we should be getting the defibrillator,” Bruce states, nervously holding Peter down despite the fact that his body is eerily still in reaction to whatever’s going on.

“No!” Doctor Strange shouts, his hands still connected to Peter’s head. “He’s almost out of it. He’ll make it.”

The heart monitor still beeps loudly in warning. The EEG runs on in sharp spikes. May isn’t so sure they should be trusting the magic doctor, but at this point, it’s this or never speaking to Peter again, and she’s far more scared of the latter. 

 

xx

 

When Peter opens his eyes again, he’s once again in his bed, in his apartment. This time, Ben is not there, shaking him awake. May is not laughing a room away. It is quiet, the silence not even permeated by May’s favorite analog clock, its clunky ticks as seconds go by not drifting in from the kitchen.

Peter clambers out of bed, scared to hope this world is real, scared that it might be. He doesn’t want to leave, and yet after everything Pepper said, after hearing Aunt May’s voice—

“It’s time to go home, Pete.” Tony is sitting on the couch in the Parkers’ living room, his arms bent and leaning on his knees. Peter warily traces the path towards him, leaving a few feet between them. He doesn’t know who or what to trust, anymore. Even if he does get back to reality, he’s sure he won’t exactly believe it for a while.

“I’m not whatever or whoever did this to you, kiddo. At least—I don’t think I am.”

“Then why…I felt like I was being torn apart, Mister Stark. Am I…am I dead?” That’s what they say happens when you die, right? The white light, the ones you love flashing before your eyes?

“Oh, Jesus, Peter, no. That’s—you’ve got a lot of years left. At least, I hope you do. I don’t want to see you anywhere near the afterlife until you’re as old as I was. Hopefully much later, actually. I was supposed to go full silver fox. Pepper was gonna go _wild_.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah, okay, too far.” Speaking like this—casual, making light of morbidity—this version of Tony is somehow more real than the version he’d pictured in his dream. Yes, Tony was full of that much love and affection, surely capable of being that happy, but he was also there in a crisis, which the dream had erased except as backstory. They’d been happy and satisfied in a world where nothing actually seemed to happen. He was a hero in a world that no longer actually needed them.

“So if I’m not dead, then…?”

“I just thought I should say goodbye. I’ll still be knocking around in here, I guess. Dreams, memories, whatever.”

“Our last goodbye—I don’t want to go through that again.”

“Then let’s not. Screw it. Adios, Pete, see you around, don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you, etcetera.”

“No, no, that’s not—I just meant,” Peter breathes in, holding the breath to stave away the approaching tears before letting it go. “We really miss you, Tony. I love you, and I’m doing my best to make you proud.”

Tony’s joking smile drops, and he stands, closing the distance between them to rest a hand on Peter’s shoulder to lightly ghost his fingers over the back of Peter’s neck affectionately. “You’re gonna be so great, Peter. You already are. I’m so proud of you, bud. I always was.”

Peter sniffs, kicking his foot against the floor petulantly. “I wish we had more time.”

“You know I wish that too, but.” Tony shrugs. “What happened in the moment happened, and here we are. I spent five years without you, Peter. I say we shouldn’t waste what we have left, huh?”

Peter nods, folding himself into another hug with Tony. It feels more genuine, knowing the dream was just that, that the memories he’d been given aren’t actually what happened.

He tells Tony this, and in response Tony simply pulls away and says “You wouldn’t have wanted to know me, back then. Even after Afghanistan, I was…lost, for a long time. Trying to do the right thing and not always sure exactly what it was. I just trusted my gut and had to deal with the consequences.”

“Isn’t that exactly what I do, though?”

Tony pauses, his stare over Peter’s head long. “Oh God, I was a terrible mentor, wasn’t I?”

Peter laughs, but shakes his head. “You weren’t. Seriously, there was no one else better for me. You learned from your mistakes and taught me to ask for help, to use my brain first, to—“

“Okay, okay, I remember, no sullying my own good name around you.” Tony smiles and bumps Peter with his elbow, taking the returning playful nudge.

It was so easy to forget. Peter feels the draw again, to forget that Tony isn’t really in front of him, that he'll be gone the next time Peter opens his eyes. He yearns for the security of coming up to Tony’s house and finding him in the workshop, of coming to him with the silliest of problems and projects and getting genuine interest and care in return. He just misses Tony, plain and simple.

“Hey,” Tony nudges him again, breaking the reverie. “Nuh-uh. None of that. This is a good moment, Pete.”

Peter frowns. “Yeah, until it’s over.”

Tony lifts a shoulder. “Part of the journey is the end.”

Peter jerks his gaze up. “You’re quoting yourself right now? Seriously, Mister Stark?”

“Too soon?”

It _is_ probably too soon, considering that recording is one of the last things Peter and the Starks have left of Tony, but he lets it pass. The apartment around them is growing blurry at the edges.

“I really miss you, Tony.”

“I miss you too, Peter. You’re growing up so fast, already. Tell Morgan how much I loved her, okay? I feel like with you I never—I don’t want either of you to forget. I love you so much. You’re gonna do great out there. You don’t need this dream to make you happy. You’ve got so many people who love you, and—you’re gonna do so many good things.”

“I hope so, Mister Stark.”

“I know so, kid.”

 

xx

 

Peter wakes up again. This time it’s as expected: it’s not his bedroom, but a hospital room. He’s surrounded on all sides—Doctor Strange, Doctor Banner, Pepper, and May in a tight circle around his bed.

“Oh, thank God.” May jumps up from her chair at the first sign of his consciousness, pulling him into her chest. “You scared us, Pete. It’s been over a week, and you weren’t waking up, and—“

Peter tries to talk, but his throat is hoarse with disuse. In fact, unlike in the dream, he feels the pinches and prods all over his body. There’s an EEG machine hooked up around his skull, IVs in his arms…oh, geez, feeding tube in his nose, too. That’ll suck to get removed later.

Pepper hands him a cup, and Peter drinks the water slowly, wary of disrupting anything that’s attached to him or physically a result of being in a hospital bed for over a week.

“I’m okay, May,” Peter finally gets out, squeezing May’s hand where she’s moved to hold it since her initial hug. “It was just—I’m okay, right?” he asks, looking to Doctor Strange and Doctor Banner.

“It will be easier to ascertain once you identify the person that put this spell on you, but for now, Mister Parker, I believe you’re in the clear.” It’s not the most confident answer, but Peter is satisfied with it. As for the other part of the problem…he’ll get to it when he’s not hooked up to a catheter.

“We’ll keep him for observation for a few days to be on the safe side,” Doctor Banner says, nodding to the door. “A recommendation of Doctor Cho I think we can all get behind after all of…that.”

“Speaking of,” Pepper starts. She looks at him with understanding. He remembers what she’d said in the dream: _No wonder you want to stay._ She’d probably had similar dreams, based on the years of reality. He only saw Tony a few times a week. Pepper woke up with her husband almost every day of her life, even before they were married. “I know it was hard, walking away. I’m glad that you did. It’s nice to dream, but…it’s hard to face reality when things don’t match up.”

“There wasn’t much of a choice to make, in the end,” Peter replies, even though it’s only half-true. He’d been tempted, talking to Tony again. If Ben had walked into the room too, he might have submitted to the fantasy all over again. “Morgan and I are all tied up in Mario Kart. I’d hate to lose by default.”

The joke breaks the tension, but Pepper takes the cup of water from him so that she can take his other hand, squeezing like May like she knows how close they came to losing him to his own mind.

“I’ll schedule you two a playdate as soon as you’re better,” Pepper jokes, eyes only a little watery.

“I’d like that,” he says. He thinks of what he told Tony, of the message of his love Peter promised to deliver, over and over so that Morgan would know, like Peter knows now, has always known. 

Even if the Tony in his dreams wasn’t the real thing, he had a point: between finding the magic-user that did this to him, spending more time with Morgan, and convincing his Aunt May that he’s not leaving again any time soon…

Peter’s got a lot of good left to do.

**Author's Note:**

> God, I hope this fic made sense, between the italicizing and going between the dream-AU scenes and everything. It’s one of the more adventurous sort of things I’ve tried since doing a book-based multi-AU fic back when I wrote Arrow fic, and I really enjoyed coming up with the scenes world from Peter’s head in particular. (And trying to find a bright side in Endgame/Tony's sacrifice, or something?)
> 
> Speaking of, Peter’s parents don’t survive here for a mix of reasons, but the major one was “I wanted certain scenes for the dream!AU parts, and adding Peter’s parents into them would’ve made it more complicated to orchestrate.” Like…Tony and Ben are friends, y’all!!! I got to write that for our boy Peter! Hooray! Besides that, though, it actually played really well into the “spell” of it all: some things stay the same, others change. It’s all just Peter’s brain making things up on the fly, attempting to adapt to what it thinks will make Peter happiest and keep him in the spell.
> 
> (And speaking of the spell…I super phoned in who did the spell. I just wanted to do the trope. Assume Peter knows more than me and figures it out. There were a couple of comic book characters with dream-related powers, but trying to incorporate all that plot-heavy stuff ruined what I had going, so I'm letting it be.)
> 
> If you enjoyed this story, kudos, comments, and bookmarks are super appreciated! Like I said, this trope is dear to me, so I’d love to know who else enjoys it. As always, feel free to talk to me on [my tumblr](http://www.imgoingtocrash.tumblr.com) about Irondad, or Marvel, or whatever else. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
